


for a moment's rest

by seularen



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:22:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seularen/pseuds/seularen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You should stay, Bruce. Tony’s offer is a good one.” In the days after battle, Bruce makes a decision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for a moment's rest

Bruce had promised himself in a dozen variations on his ride into the city that he’d never step foot on SHIELD property again. By the time he’d zigzaged the motorcycle between carnage and wreckage to reach Steve and the others, Bruce had almost convinced himself he meant it. He wouldn’t be talked into a cage, not again. Not after the sacrifices he’s made to stay off the grid.  
  
Of course, these resolutions mean nothing once he changes. After they capture Loki they have to bring him to Fury, and the Hulk is unwilling to let Loki out of his sight. So Bruce regains control in one of the many break rooms on the aircraft: tables and chairs, a television on the wall, refrigerator, kitchenette-- and Tony, bent over his computer.  
  
“You really should come stay with me and Pepper,” Tony begins without preamble.  
  
“Why am I not in restraints?” Bruce asks, ignoring Tony’s suggestion.  
  
“I convinced them you don’t need containment,” Tony explains, unfazed by the non sequitor. “Although your greener half did most of the persuasion.”  
  
“What? D--”  
  
“No damage,” Tony hastens to explain, then looks up and tilts his head to the side, unabashedly _observing_ Bruce. “The memories aren’t instantaneous.” A pause. “There are multiple floors of guest suites at Stark Tower. Plenty of room, even for you.”  
  
“No, the memories... they’ll integrate slowly over the next few hours to days. I think it’s a defense mechanism my brain developed against overloading.” Bruce thinks maybe if he doesn’t respond Tony will get bored. It’s a weak hypothesis, but he doesn’t-- can’t stay. Can’t. It’s too risky.  
  
“Huh,” Tony says. “Fascinating. We’ll have to give your notes to Jarvis for transcription. I assume you’ve been taking notes.”  
  
“You believed me when I said all I brought was a toothbrush?”  
  
Tony smirks. He looks like he’s about to make a wiseass remark about it when Thor walks in.  
  
“My friend, you have returned!” he booms at Bruce, who simply isn’t prepared to engage on that level of enthusiasm right now. Thankfully, Thor turns his attention to Tony. “Now seems the appropriate time to partake in the local delicacy you so craved after battle.”  
  
Tony stands, pointing a finger at Thor. “This man has his priorities straight.”  
  
Bruce’s body screams out for rest, but he’s informed by everyone that if they have to go with Tony to get shawarma (“Whatever the hell _that_ is,” Clint mutters underneath his breath), then Bruce isn’t getting out of it “just because you hulked out,” as Tony so delicately puts it.  
  
( _Just because_. As if it really _were_ a party trick, and the worst he’d done was set his sleeve on fire. He marvels at Tony’s nonchalance and the way the rest of the team has started to pick up on it. It’s been less than 72 hours since he’s met Stark, but Bruce already knows not to dismiss the idea that it’s all part of some bigger machination.)  
  
So Tony drags them all out, and they walk the last three blocks because Thor has never been to New York-- down the middle of the street, Thor picking up the occasional car and turning it back over as Steve points to buildings and tells him how it looked in his day, Tony and Bruce already throwing around hypotheses about Asgardian technology, Clint and Natasha hanging back to bring up the rear (Bruce sees them scanning the sidewalks and buildings, wonders if they can help their paranoia and if it’s part of the bond they share). It’s almost friendly, but Bruce knows it will take a hell of a lot more than one win to solidify this so-called team. There is much about this group that doesn’t work; that’s very clear, especially as they eat their shawarma in silence. There’s only so much small talk a bunch of freaks can share before it sputters out, Bruce thinks.  
  
As they’re leaving, Natasha pulls him aside.  
  
“Do you have a place to stay?” It’s a question Bruce isn’t expecting. He thought everyone knew those were his intentions. Tony seemed to pick up on them, at least, and had stopped asking him to stay at Stark Tower. His plan involved finding that motorcycle and getting as far away from SHIELD as possible. This must show in his face, because she adds, “We won’t let them do anything to you, Bruce.” _We_ _?_ , he thinks. _Odd word coming from you, Natasha._  
  
“I hadn’t planned on sticking around,” he says.  
  
“Loki’s not gone yet,” she reminds him.  
  
“You think SHIELD will actually let Thor take him back to their planet?” Bruce asks. In his experience, the military doesn’t simply hand over extremely lucrative R &D opportunities-- even if that opportunity doubles as a person.  
  
“I’d like to see them stop him,” Natasha responds, and Bruce will concede that Thor has a mean swing with that hammer. “You should stay, Bruce. Tony’s offer is a good one.” Bruce doesn’t ask how she knows about that. The more questions he asks, the more he gets sucked into this circus. But Tony’s words come back to him ( _you don’t need containment_ ) and he feels his resolve crumbling.  
  
“What are you suggesting?” he asks, and she raises an eyebrow at him expectantly.  
  
Which is how Bruce spends two restless nights with Natasha and Clint at SHIELD's makeshift base (their airship being worse for wear), in a room with bunks that remind him of old pictures of Captain America visiting soldiers on the front lines. (He wonders if Steve stayed here after he unthawed.) He tries to quell the paranoia that at any moment a team of armed agents will swarm the room and sedate him. It’s a difficult internal battle; he’s spent three years ready to flee at the smallest suspicion of a military tail. Now, he’s bunking in their headquarters.  
  
None of them sleep much. They spent the first night in heavy, wary silence until eventually Bruce drifts off. The second night is much the same until Natasha clears her throat and asks,  
  
“Have you ever changed in your sleep, Bruce?” Disappointment twinges in his chest but in the dark, staring at the ceiling from his top bunk, he finds he can pretend their fear is curiosity.  
  
“Uh... a few times, at the beginning. When I had more vivid nightmares.” Clint makes a noise in his throat; agreement or maybe sympathy, Bruce can’t really tell. Bruce pauses in case the other man wants to say something, isn’t surprised when he doesn’t. “I worked pretty hard to stop those.”  
  
“How?” Natasha asks. Her voice is its usual brusque undertone, but Bruce can sense a new urgency. Clint must have heard it as well, because he sits up. His bunk is underneath Natasha’s (neither of them being brave enough to sleep underneath a man who could, without warning, gain a few hundred pounds). Bruce wonders what Natasha has nightmares about; he thinks Clint has more than an idea.  
  
“Yoga,” Bruce says sardonically, recalling her flippant remark when they first met. His comment wins a chuckle, and through the dim Clint shoots him a raised eyebrow. The two men lock eyes, and Bruce smiles: _I might be a stranger still, but you accepted me. I care too._ Clint pauses, considering, then returns the smile with a nod. They’re not exchanging friendship bracelets, but Bruce is more than glad for this tentative companionship. “Actually, yoga and meditation do help,” he continues after the moment of silence; he understands she won’t ask again no matter how important the answer is to her. “But nightmares come from unresolved, unconscious fears. To make them stop, I drew those fears into my consciousness and addressed them.”  
  
“Easy as that, huh?” Clint drawls. They all laugh at that.  
  
“Next I’ll teach you how to find your spirit animal,” he returns, really smiling now. And then, drunk off the giddiness of camaraderie, Bruce finds himself saying quite calmly, “I can remember everything he does, more or less. I had nightmares about all the people he’s killed, and I couldn’t-- can’t--” There’s a kind of magic in talking into the dark, as if the night swallowed up all their secrets as they were spoken. Perhaps that’s why Natasha responds the way she does.  
  
“You’re a _good man_ , Bruce,” she speaks to the ceiling, and the words rebound their way inside his heart. “Spies manipulate; they have to be able to see what’s underneath the facades and roles, where the vulnerabilities lie. The--” she catches herself, a millisecond slip but he hears it. They all hear it. “The _other guy_ is _not_ who you are underneath the mask of Bruce Banner.” Clint makes that noise again, more emphatic this time.  
  
“I’d like to believe you,” Bruce says sadly. He thinks back on Tony trying to draw a parallel between his arc reactor and... but Tony’s wrong. None of them understand, really, what it’s like to share a body with another being. Violation doesn’t begin to explain the feeling.  
  
“You’re a scientist, Bruce.” Clint speaks with the quiet conviction of a tactician’s analysis. “You don’t need belief. You need proof.”  
  
“Well, next time he saves a bus full of children, make sure to upload it to YouTube,” Bruce retorts, ignoring his own advice and pushing his fears underneath sarcasm. The mood shifts again, and he can sense that his tone worries them. _Are we irritating him?_ , he knows they’re thinking. _Is he getting angry?_ Bruce sighs and tempers himself. “I haven’t found any proof in three years. But... I won’t rule out the possibility, even one based on sentimentality.”  
  
Natasha and Clint have no answer, perhaps remembering ~~what~~ who he is and scared into a more permanent silence. Bruce sighs again, rolling to face the wall. First Tony, now these two. Steve, too, in his quiet way, stubbornly refuses to fear the other guy as much as he should. After the battle against Loki’s army, Bruce can tell Steve considers the other guy a fellow soldier. Bruce finds that level of familiarity naive at best; it’s going to get someone killed. (Bruce still doesn’t know what to think about Thor, has for the most part dismissed him since Thor announced he was leaving for his planet-- a fact Bruce feels still needs a hell of a lot more elucidation from SHIELD. He makes a mental note to ask Tony for the files.) Bruce doesn’t understand why these strangers have, seemingly independent of each other, each decided to take up this cause. How can they expect to convince him of the other guy’s humanity when Bruce barely believes it of himself?  
  
On the other side of the room, Natasha and Clint make no noise. As the deep silence that accompanies soundproofed rooms settles in around them, it’s impossible to tell if they’re asleep-- until there’s a rustling and the unmistakable sound of a body climbing up to the top bunk. A little rearranging and then silence again. Even breathing betrays the comfort they gain from each other. Bruce smiles in the dark. _Good_ , he thinks, _better to have someone to rely on in this madness. It will keep them safe._ Bruce allows himself to think of Betty, just for a moment, then deliberately takes a deep breath and lets the feeling go again. He slips into his breathing routine and his mind goes quiet. His eyes are getting heavy when the memories start surfacing; he had been expecting them, and they’re clearer than usual. As if the barrier between them has suddenly become translucent. The thought terrifies him, but knows not to fight the new memories. He falls asleep remembering how light the metal man was when he fell from the sky.  
  
Bruce wakes to Natasha and Clint moving around the room. There’s an easiness this morning, knowing they’re going to see Thor off with Loki as prisoner. Natasha takes his bag for him (nothing but a small backpack for both her and Clint, which Clint has slung over his shoulder; they already have another assignment). _Maybe I’ll accept Tony’s offer_ , Bruce thinks as they leave together. _I can always leave again_. He opens his phone to find a text waiting for him-- from Tony, who was never given Bruce’s number. Bruce is only surprised it took the other man so long.  
  
“hope you enjoy reading debriefing reports big guy,” it reads.  
  
Bruce grins.

**Author's Note:**

> yes, everybody cares about you  
> and whether or not you want them to  
> it’s a chemical embrace that kicks you in the head  
> to a pure synthetic sympathy that infuriates you totally  
> and a quiet lie that makes you wanna scream and shout...  
> (everybody cares, everybody understands -- elliott smith)


End file.
